


aftermath

by dutchydoescoke



Series: apart at the seams [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 06:18:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9980087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchydoescoke/pseuds/dutchydoescoke
Summary: She doesn’t wake up screaming.





	

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaanother fill for the [Shadowhunters ficathon](http://ladygawain.livejournal.com/83816.html), this time for the prompt "Dot Rollins - PTSD".
> 
> Warning for self-harm, mentions of torture, and general PTSD.

She doesn’t wake up screaming.

She thinks it might be better if she did, if someone could hear her and make her talk about it.

She can’t bring herself to say something, not outright, but she flinches at needles and finds herself using the front-facing camera on her phone to double-check that the black spider-webbing veins really have receded, with alarming frequency.

For the first time in her life, she avoids doing magic. Sure, she got Clary out and protected Madzie, but everything else she did for months was to aid someone who wanted her kind dead. Summoning up the power to do things, even simple things, leaves a slimy, sickening feeling in her and brief moments of terror when she thinks about saying ‘no’ to whoever’s asking.

A week into her stay, Jace cuts his hand open and she almost vomits at the blood and reflexively flinches away from whoever is trying to calm her, like soothing words will help the memories of acid in her veins and fire burning her up while her body fought itself.

Magnus tries to help. He heals her, forces the foreign blood out of her system while she lays on his couch and tries not to hate herself like she hasn’t since she was ten and first started glamoring her warlock mark.

When she has to leave the apartment, she walks. Portal travel reminds her of seraph blades pressed against her spine, of whispered threats about what would happen if she messed them up, of more injections to give her more power, or so his reasoning was.

The first time someone comes near her with a stele in hand, her magic flares up without her permission, a defensive wave that knocks it out of his hand and leaves Jace on his back to stare at her. Before she can stammer out an apology, Jace is up and hiding it and very gently herding her towards the balcony and away from an enclosed space before a panic attack can start. (She’s forgotten he’d been there, albeit briefly, that he’s more likely than the rest of them to know what will set her off.)

Magnus doesn’t say anything about the broken lamp or the fact that she’s falling apart at the seams, just makes her a cup of tea. A recipe he stole from Ragnor, he says, and gracefully ignores the way the cup rattles against the table when she sets it down.

Logically, she knows that there wasn’t anything she could have done. If she’d tried to run, she’d be dead. If she’d tried to sabotage Valentine’s plans, she’d be dead. Magnus reminds her of all of this as often as he can.

It doesn’t help the nightmares, the memory of strange blood burning through her veins and making her sick when she jolts awake at night, staring at the ceiling of Magnus’s second guest room and trying not to throw up.

Some nights, she sits up, curled in a corner with her eyes glued to the walls, watching for shadows that don’t belong, hands buried in her hair and fingernails digging into her scalp until she bleeds because it’s not over, it still hurts, and she wants it to _stop_.

(It does, eventually, when Valentine’s corpse is at the bottom of the East River after she put him there.)


End file.
